EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--KineMed, Inc. (www.kinemed.com) announced today that it has been awarded a three-year grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to apply its novel, proprietary non-invasive measurement of skeletal muscle mass to pre-term and full-term infants and young children. The Principal Investigator, William Evans, Ph.D., is head of the KineMed Division of Muscle and Health. The study will, for the first time, measure changes in skeletal muscle mass during one year of growth. The information from this project will provide new information to better assess the effects of nutritional status and other factors that result in the loss of muscle.
Childhood malnutrition and growth stunting have possible long-term consequences on the capacity of individuals to reach their full adult potential. According to the World Health Organization in 2013, 161.5 million children worldwide under the age of 5 experience growth stunting. “Growth stunting and malnutrition/kwashiorkor remain problems of enormous public health importance throughout the world. Muscle mass is perhaps the most sensitive metric of growth stunting, but there had not been a simple field measurement test for muscle mass before now,” said Marc Hellerstein, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer of KineMed. “We at KineMed are very excited about working with the Gates Foundation to develop and validate our test of muscle mass in this setting.”
About KineMed, Inc.
KineMed is a life sciences company that has developed a platform technology with broad applications in drug development and medical diagnosis. Using its patented technology, KineMed has developed analytic biomarker tests that measure, in a single sample, the rate of change of critical biological pathways. KineMed has the unique ability to measure the production and destruction of key molecules involved in health and disease-modifying biological processes to provide meaningful, and previously unavailable, information to transform healthcare decisions. For more information about KineMed, please visit: www.kinemed.com.